Towards the end of last month our IP notified us by email that we were approaching our monthly bandwidth cap of 90gb (we were at 85%) - combined D/Ls and U/Ls.
I freaked - since usually our monthly barely approaches 50% of our cap.
So we start investigating.
We checked the daily stats and saw several days in a row with up to 3gb/day uploads. Normally our uploads are extremely low - just a few hundred meg (not gig) per day - at most.
So I start thinking someone's jacking our wi-fi (even though it's secured). All kinds of thoughts are going through my head, like what in hell are they uploading?!
I called our cable ISP and they were adament the daily stats were correct and they hadn't fouled up somehow.
So we changed our wi-fi password (again) and implemented a few more security measures. And suddenly we notice our stats drop dramatically - back to normal.
Our daughter moved back in around the same day the bandwidth useage went insane. We never thought of it until just earlier. Turns out - (you've already guessed it) - she has a bit torrent client on her laptop that she downloads movies with - but has it at the default settings so it's seeding up to 200 users full throttle!! Without her (or us) knowing about it (she's not computer savvy).
She had her laptop set to default to our wi-fi anytime she was here at the house (which we didn't mind at the time).
Luckily, we nipped this in the bud and didn't incur a shitload of extra bandwidth charges, lol.
Live and learn (forehead slap). For those of you with kids - watch for spikes on your bandwidth consumption.
/end epic